Dame Angela Lansbury dies aged 96
The screen legend's family confirmed her passing on Tuesday 11 October.
Dame Angela Lansbury has died aged 96.
The Murder, She Wrote actress and screen and stage icon passed away peacefully at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday (11 October), according to a statement from her family.
“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” the announcement reads (via NBC News).
Born in London in 1925 to Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury, Angela Lansbury moved to the United States in 1940 during the Second World War, where she studied acting at New York’s Feagin School of Drama and Radio.
After being signed by MGM, she received an Academy Award nominations for her first two film roles in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). She would earn a third nomination for The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and eventually be awarded with an Honorary Academy Award for her lifetime achievement in film in 2013.
Film, television and stage roles in the West End and on Broadway continued throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s before Lansbury was introduced to an even wider global audience in hit American crime drama Murder, She Wrote in 1984.
The actress starred as mystery author and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher for 12 seasons and 264 episodes before the popular series concluded in 1996, earning ten Golden Globes nominations (with four wins) and 12 Emmy Award nominations during its run.
In total, Lansbury earned five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes and an Olivier Award during the course of her career, and in 2014 was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II.
In later life, Lansbury returned to the big screen with roles in Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Her final appearance on screen will come in the form of a cameo appearance in The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Tale, which is due for release later this year.
In 1945 at the age of 19, Lansbury married the actor Richard Cromwell, who was 16 years her senior. The marriage ended in divorce in 1946, but the pair remained friends until his death in 1960.
Reflecting on her first marriage in 2017, Lansbury told Radio Times: “I had no idea that I was marrying a gay man. I found him such an attractive individual.”
She continued: “He wanted to marry, he was fascinated with me, but only because of what he had seen on the screen, really. It didn’t injure or damage me in any way, because he maintained a friendship with me and my future husband.”
The star added: “But it was a shock to me when it ended, I wasn’t prepared for that. It was just a terrible error I made as a very young woman. But I don’t regret it.”
Lansbury went on to marry actor and producer Peter Shaw in 1949, with the pair remaining together for 54 years until his death in 2003. She is survived by her two children with Shaw; Anthony and Deirdre.